


Wish Upon a Star

by muse_in_absentia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Parenting, Decorating, Dysfunctional Family, Eponine Tries to be a Good Sibling, Failed Baking, Family, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_in_absentia/pseuds/muse_in_absentia
Summary: When Eponine tries to do something nice for her siblings everything that can go wrong does, but somehow it turns out alright anyway.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: Les Mis Holiday Exchange (2020)





	Wish Upon a Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhyol1te](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhyol1te/gifts).



> [rhyol1te](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhyol1te/pseuds/rhyol1te) I hope that you like this. It sort of slipped sideways on me, but hopefully it still fits the request well enough! And Happy Holidays!!!
> 
> A huge thank you to [Les Amis DCD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmostARealHobbit/pseuds/les%20Amis%20DCD) for the amazing beta job, and for talking me through this when I got stuck!

Eponine sinks down into her busted sofa, the springs squeaking under even her slight weight, and that one loose one in the back is poking her in the hip. Her shift at the diner had been long and she’s fairly sure she still smells like the coffee that one customer poured down her uniform, but she isn’t certain. She hasn’t been able to smell coffee in a long time. Or maybe everything smells like coffee. She isn’t sure anymore; it’s one of the many hazards of working in a diner. 

A quick glance at her phone tells her that she has exactly three hours until she has to be at the bar for the evening shift, which gives her just enough time for a quick nap and to shower and change. Instead, she thumbs across the cracked screen and scrolls through her to-do list, wincing at what’s left and how little has been crossed off. 

Sighing, she hauls herself back to her feet, swaps out her uniform for a pair of beat-up jeans and a plain black shirt, and she laces herself into her knock off Doc Martins. She forces herself to march out the door without looking behind her or allowing herself to dwell on the thought of her bed. She doesn’t have time. 

* 

There’s snow caked on her boots and soaking through her threadbare jacket as Eponine quietly unlocks her door. The shift at the bar ran long and it’s nearly three in the morning, so she’s tiptoeing inside before she remembers that Irma went home to visit her family for Christmas and won’t be back for nearly two weeks. The quiet is unnerving and for the first time she finds that she misses her roommate. She can’t focus when it’s quiet, and she has too many things to do before she lets herself fall asleep. The speakers on her phone aren’t great, but it’s what she has, so she pulls up a playlist of holiday music that she can stand to listen to to try and get herself into the spirit of the season, but mostly to break the silence. 

Her next shift at the diner doesn’t start until noon, and she has taken the next three nights off from the bar, so she has a few hours she can use before she has to force herself to sleep or she won’t be able to work. 

The apartment smells like her neighbor on the left forgot to open the window before smoking up again, and she sighs, feeling the weight of her day come crashing down on her shoulders all at once. She sinks onto the couch, jacket soaking the back of the cushion, and hangs her head into her hands. 

“I’m not going to pull this off,” she whispers into her hands, feeling tears creeping up. She knows there aren’t enough hours in the day, and that she’s going to run herself into the ground. But this will be the first holiday season since she got out from under her parent’s roof, and she is determined to make it perfect. 

Giving herself a slow count of sixty to feel sorry for herself, she dashes the wetness from her eyes, blinks heavily a couple of times, and leverages herself back up to her feet, tying her hair out of her face with an old, fraying elastic, and squaring her shoulders. She sheds her coat even though the apartment is slightly chilly, and leaves it in a pile on the sofa. 

Walking in a Winter Wonderland crackles out of her phone, and she snorts and shuts the music back off again. No one should have to listen to that after walking forty minutes home in the snow, well after midnight. 

The small stove in her kitchen isn’t large enough for more than one tray of cookies at a time, but that’s okay, since she doesn’t own more than one cookie sheet. 

The cookie dough she made the night before is now sufficiently chilled; she unwraps it from the cling wrap she had balled around it, and starts forming small balls and placing them on the tray. This is her third batch of dough. The first two hadn’t set up at all despite Irma’s very thoroughly explained recipe, and she’s determined to get at least this part of the process right. It isn’t Christmas without cookies. 

Once the tray is full of little irregularly shaped dough lumps, she puts them in the oven and goes to finally strip off her wet clothes. 

The next thing she knows, the smoke alarm is going off, and she’s flinging herself off the sofa in a burst of adrenaline that muscles aside the lethargy that’s still clinging to her from her accidental nap. 

She throws the window open quickly, and takes the smoke alarm off the wall to pop the battery out. The light is on in the oven, and she can see that there’s no fire, no danger, just little piles of blackened cookie dough melted to the baking sheet, and she isn’t sure how else to stop the horrid beeping from waking her entire floor. 

“Fuck,” she hisses out loud, burning her hand as she pulls the tray from the oven and turns the oven off. The whole apartment now smells like the lingering pot from her neighbor mixed with burnt sugar and smoke, and it only takes her a moment of trying to realize she can’t get the burnt cookies off the tray, so she can’t try again. Finally, she just throws the tray, the leftover cookie dough, and any hopes she had of baking something for Christmas into the trash. She forces herself to just go to bed. She has three days left to try and pull something together to make this holiday at least marginally better than the miserable excuse for a celebration her parents never let them have. 

Sleep is a long time coming, and she tosses on her sagging mattress; pale blue light has started peeking through her window when she finally succumbs. 

* 

The diner is full of harried shoppers, and Eponine is trying very hard to not have to hear the cheerful holiday music blasting tinnily out of cheap speakers. It’s loud and crowded, and she’s half asleep on her feet. 

That’s her only excuse for not noticing Gavroche slipping into the building behind an elderly couple and sidling up to the counter until she’s walking past him, her arms full of dirty dishes and half-finished meals. 

She gapes, but has to hustle back to the kitchen to deposit her armload before she can address her brother. 

“You okay?” Carol asks from where she’s swapping out the stale coffee in the warmers for the freshly brewed pot. 

“Yeah,” Eponine answers quietly, scrubbing a hand across her eyes and pouring herself a cup of the coffee that’s too stale to serve the guests. She figures it’s probably okay if they were going to throw it out anyway, and Carol never calls her on it. 

She wants to go back out to the counter and make a scene, but she knows that will get her nowhere, so she takes a deep breath and forces herself to walk slowly and calmly back to the counter. 

“Hey squirt, why aren’t you in school?” She hopes that school is just already closed for the winter break and she’s forgotten, but Gavroche grins at her, a sharp thing that feels familiar, like she once used it herself until she had to fight to find her smile at all, until all that was left was the fight. She hopes Gavroche never gets to that point. 

“Didn’t feel like it.” 

Another deep breath. 

“Gav, you have to go to school.” She doesn’t ask why their parents didn’t make him. They probably haven’t even noticed. 

The old man sitting next to Gavroche doesn’t notice when a slice of toast and a bit of egg disappears off his plate, so deftly that Eponine herself couldn’t have done it. She hates that Gavroche has had to learn at all. 

“What for? You didn’t finish school.” 

“And you are going to do better for yourself than I am.” 

She doesn’t tell him to stay put, because she knows that as soon as she does he’ll disappear into the throngs of holiday shoppers and she won’t see him for days. Instead, she pretends she’s doing her job, cleaning up an abandoned plate of food and taking it to the kitchen for Mark to wash. If the toast disappears into her pocket on the way no one needs to know but her. 

“Carol, something’s come up, can you cover my last two hours?” 

Carol frowns at her, but nods, and Eponine strips off her apron with a grateful smile. On her way out of the kitchen a half a muffin and two hardboiled eggs also find their way into her pockets. She long ago learned to feed herself mostly from scraps that were headed for the trash anyway. It’s one less expense she needs to try and find a way to pay. 

As soon as she slips out from behind the counter, she catches Gavroche by the arm. “All right, squirt. Let’s go. Now.” 

She tows him outside into the overcast light, flurries falling, everything a flat grey. Gavroche has no coat, so she drops hers over his shoulders before he can protest, trying to keep it from slipping off of him while unwilling to let go of his arm for fear that he’ll disappear. 

“I would drag you to school right now if the day weren’t mostly over. So now you have to come shopping with me, instead.” 

Gavroche glares at her, but he doesn’t tug against her hand, so she carefully lets go, and when he doesn’t bolt, she goes into her pocket and pulls out the half a muffin she stole from work. 

“Here,” she says, slipping it into her jacket pocket where he can pull it out himself when he wants. He doesn’t say anything in return, but he does pull the jacket fully around his shoulders. 

They meander along the streets, kicking up little clouds of snow, until they reach a small second-hand store with a huge Christmas display. Mentally tallying her free cash, Eponine tugs Gavroche inside. 

The store doesn’t have the musty smell of every second-hand shop she’s ever been in, instead smelling strongly of cinnamon. It’s cluttered, but not difficult to walk through, and Eponine lets Gavroche free to tear through the isles and poke at holiday decorations and toys while she scans the shop for small Christmas items that she can fit into her tiny apartment. She grabs some cheap tinsel and a box of basic glass ornaments in silver, gold and white. Through the top of the box she can see that one of them is cracked, but the rest of them look to be okay. 

There’s a small, barely melted, jar candle that smells like pine trees and after some deliberation she adds it to her small pile. If nothing else it will help keep the place from smelling like her neighbor’s pot all the time. 

She isn’t sure where Gavroche has gotten off to, but she hasn’t heard anything crashing, so she assumes he’s okay, and keeps wandering until her eye catches sight of a delicate glass star. It has at least a dozen razor sharp points and the edges look like they’ve been dipped in gold and she’s afraid to even touch it. It would be perfect on top of the tree she hasn’t gotten yet, but when she flips the price tag around she winces and leaves it where it is, instead picking up a second box of ornaments, this time shaped like icicles in pale blue. She kind of wants to also take the box of black baubles, give it a touch of her own style, but she already has too much in her hands, and that wouldn’t be very Christmas-like, even if she would like it. 

Finally, she finds her way to the counter and gently sets her haul down. The elderly man behind the counter doesn’t see her at first, but she just waits patiently. She’s had enough with impatient customers herself this time of year, she refuses to be one for someone else. 

Gavroche comes skidding up alongside her, grinning. “Buying Christmas decorations? That’s sad,” he says, crumbs around the edges of his mouth. She assumes he found the muffin. 

The man behind the counter hears him and looks up from the sudoku puzzle he was working on, giving them both a large smile. His name tag reads Paul. 

“Can I help you?” 

“Just these, please.” 

“Not even the black ones back there?” Gavroche asks, raising an eyebrow at her in a way that makes him look remarkably like Azelma. Eponine silently prays that Azelma’s attitude isn’t rubbing off on him. The last thing she needs is two insufferable know-it-all teenagers to deal with. 

“They aren’t very Christmassy, are they?” she asks. 

“No, but they’re very you.” 

She gives Gavroche a long look, then smiles at Paul. “Do you mind?” 

“No one else here today, take your time.” 

“Thank you.” 

She takes the box of blue icicles off the counter and goes to swap them out for the box of black baubles. It’s marked cheaply, she assumes because of the color, so she grabs a strand of fairy lights to go with it. She gives the star one last long look, then goes back to the counter to pay for her decorations. 

“That will be $17.83.” 

Better than she expected. Eponine hands over twenty dollars and pockets her change while Paul carefully wraps her boxes in tissue paper and puts them in a bag for her. 

“Thank you.” She smiles at him again before rounding up Gavroche, who has procured a candy cane from somewhere, and heading back outside into snow that has picked up steadily. 

“So, why did you really skip school today?” she asks, steering him in the direction of home, hoping he doesn’t notice. 

He doesn’t answer for a long moment, but finally there’s a loud crunch, and the candy cane shatters. “It was the school holiday party today.” 

“But wouldn’t that have been fun?” 

“Maybe,” he says slowly. “But they wanted us to bring in something for the class to eat. Cookies or something.” 

Eponine doesn’t ask him to elaborate any more. She knows that their parents would never have provided him with something to take to class. They barely provided him with enough to eat for himself, the idea of spending money on food to share was beyond their understanding. 

“Next time, you call me. Or have Azelma text me, I know she hogs the phone.” She had bought a cheap cell phone for all of them to hide from their parents so they could get in contact with her if they needed her. Azelma rarely lets it out of her sight, but she knows that if Gavroche needs it he’ll just pick it out of Azelma’s pocket. Azelma never picked up the trick, so she never notices when it’s being used on her. “I’ll make sure you have something to take, okay?” 

“You can’t bake.” 

It isn’t a no, though, which Eponine takes as a win. “No, I can’t, but my roommate can, and she’s trying to teach me. And if I can’t learn in time, I can still shop.” 

Gavroche doesn’t say anything, but he breaks a small piece off his candy cane and hands it to her. She pops it in her mouth, and turns the corner to find her parent’s rundown house looming over her from the end of the street. 

“Do you have dinner tonight?” 

“I nicked dad’s wallet before they left. Got a couple hundred bucks. Azelma is making pancakes. We’ll be fine.” 

Eponine fights back the urge to say that that isn’t fine, that they shouldn’t have to pickpocket their own father to get food when they’re home alone. And that they shouldn’t be left alone for weeks at a time in the first place. But since she can’t offer anything better than pancakes herself, she holds her tongue. At least there’s food at all. 

“Then get inside before you freeze. And send Azelma out for me for a minute.” 

Gavroche disappears through the door and a minute later Azelma comes outside, a worn blanket wrapped around her shoulders in place of a coat. 

“You don’t want to come in?” she asks rather than say hello. “They’re gone for the week. Off someplace warm where dad can con their way into some fancy party or another. I stopped listening about the time they said back after New Year's.” 

Eponine shakes her head. The day she walked out of this house with nothing but a bag of clothes and thirty dollars in her pocket, she swore to herself she would never set foot in this house again, and she doesn’t plan on breaking that promise now. 

“I can’t stay,” she says rather than explain that. “I just wanted to make sure we were set for Christmas Eve, and that the boys don’t know anything.” 

“Gavroche might suspect something. It’s hard to hide things from him. But the twins certainly don’t have any idea.” 

“And you have that list of things they need for me?” 

Azelma slips a piece of paper out of her jeans and passes it to Eponine who pockets it without looking at it. 

“Thank you.” 

Azelma just nods and goes back inside, the edges of the blanket trailing in the snow. 

Shifting her bag in her arms, Eponine starts towards her apartment, pulling the list out of her pocket as soon as she’s around the corner from the house and she’s sure none of her siblings can see her. The list hurts her to look at. So many things that no one should ever have to go without. But she’s been saving for nearly a year for this, so she hopes she can get at least some of this list taken care of in the next day or so before Christmas. 

She doesn’t let herself look at her phone before she heads off to see what stores are open that she can afford to shop in. 

* 

Eponine is surrounded by scraps of wrapping paper, and she’s pretty sure there’s tape in her hair, when her phone rings. She almost ignores it in favor of trying to finish wrapping a pair of sneakers for each of the twins, but she can’t help but look at the screen and see that it’s Mark. 

She barely gets her phone unlocked and swiped open before the call can disconnect. 

“Mark?” 

“Oh, thank fuck, I was sure you wouldn’t answer.” 

“I almost didn’t.” She can practically see the way he’s pacing in the kitchen, words coming a little too fast, stress turning his face red. She isn’t entirely sure how he got promoted to manager, but she has never once seen him handle stress or changes to the strict plan well. Every little bump in the road sends him into a panic. 

“Listen, I know you specifically requested today off, but Carol’s kid came down with an ear infection, and Daniel can’t be in for another two hours because he has class. Can you just come in for two hours? That’s all. I promise. Just until Daniel can get here.” 

She wants to say no. She wants to say fuck no. She wants to tell Mark to fuck off for even asking and putting her in this situation. But she thinks about how Carol covered for her just yesterday, and she sags a little. 

“Yeah, fine. I can use the extra cash. But only two hours. If Daniel’s late that’s too bad.” 

“Thank you so much. And I know it’s lunch time and you almost never remember to eat, so lunch is on me today, as long as it comes from our kitchens.” 

That almost makes it worth it. 

“I’ll be there in fifteen.” She hangs up before he can say thank you again, and shoves her feet into her work shoes, grabbing her uniform shirt. They’ll have to cope with her jeans today. She left her jacket with Gavroche yesterday, so she layers on an extra hoodie and marches out the door, determined to get these two hours over quickly so she can finish wrapping gifts with enough time to get the decorations up. 

When she gets to the diner, it’s so crowded she almost can’t get in the door. Every table has more space being taken up by shopping bags than by people, and the holiday music playing from the speakers makes her want to turn around and leave, but she doesn’t. She just muscles her way through the people back to the kitchen where she strips off her hoodie, fends off a hug from a nearly sobbing Mark, and ties an apron on like battle armor. 

Arms loaded with plates for orders she didn’t take, going to tables she didn’t seat, she throws herself back out into the crowds, smile used as a weapon to disarm, charm and earn the biggest tips she can. 

It’s going to be a very long two hours. 

* 

She’s trudging home, shaking a little in the cold, hoodie doing nothing to block the wind, when the light from a small bakery catches her eye. She passes it every day on her way home, but she’s never gone inside. Fresh baked goods are a fantasy for people with more disposable income than she generally has. But she had gotten some very good sales on her gifts yesterday, and she still has a few dollars left. She goes inside. 

The smell of sugar hits her instantly, warm and sweet, almost cloying, with just a hint of cinnamon in the air. It’s soothing, and the last two hours seem to melt off her shoulders. 

There’s a small carafe of hot chocolate on the counter with tiny paper cups beside it and a sign reading “help yourself”. She can’t remember the last time she had hot chocolate, but she doesn’t take any right away, instead inspecting the cases. 

They’re sparsely filled, and look to be mostly picked over. Entire trays are completely empty with only crumbs to indicate that they had ever been filled. 

A young man comes out from the back room wearing an apron patterned with little cookies, and candy canes through his stretched ears. She smiles in spite of herself. 

“Can I help you?” he asks, setting down a tray of prettily frosted sugar cookies on top of the counter. 

She looks around at the display cases and realizes there’s no prices. Usually that would mean she can’t afford anything, but she did really well on tips for the last two hours so she squares her shoulders and approaches the counter. “How much will two dozen of those fresh cookies run me?” 

He looks at her for a long minute, takes in her lack of a jacket, the way snow still clings to her hair, which has mostly fallen out of the tie she had it held back with for work, and smiles. “Well, normally they’d be thirty dollars, but you’re the first person I’ve had in here for the last three hours, and we close soon for the holidays. I only made these to keep from losing my mind from boredom. So how does twenty sound?” 

She winces. That sounds like the sort of charity she would normally refuse, but he doesn’t look pitying, and she thinks of her siblings stealing money for food, and she forces herself to smile back. “Well, if you’re really sure, then I’d love two dozen.” 

He reaches under the counter for a bright green box prefilled with red tissue paper and starts carefully putting the cookies in it. Eponine fishes through her pocket for her tip money, pulling it out and counting it subtly while he isn’t paying attention. Then, she slips five dollars into the tip jar while he is still busy. 

Once the cookies are loaded, he ties a gold ribbon around the box and passes it over the counter. “That will be $21.60.” 

She frowns. “You didn’t even ring that up?” 

He just laughs. “A dozen cupcakes is twenty dollars. And my cupcakes are really popular.” 

“That makes sense.” She hands him twenty-five and drops the change into the tip jar, this time while he can see. 

“Happy Holidays!” he calls as she steps back outside into the still falling snow. She’s just grateful that it’s not snowing heavily, because it’s been coming down for two days now. But the ground is barely coated in white, and she can still get down the streets with ease. The snow is more of an accent than any real inconvenience, and she thinks she might find it pretty if she didn’t have to keep walking in it. 

She finishes the walk home with her box held carefully so she doesn’t jostle any of the cookies. She doesn’t want them to be broken. 

When she finally unlocks her door and gets inside it’s getting dark out, but she has her box of cookies, a small container with meatloaf from the diner that she can heat up in a little while, and a pile of gifts she still needs to wrap. 

Sighing, she puts the cookies on top of the refrigerator so that they’re far out of the way, and she sits back on the floor amid her scraps of torn paper. There are a few moderately successfully wrapped gifts already stacked on the sofa. A jacket for each of them, new backpacks for the twins for school, a pocket knife for Gavroche and a new dress for Azelma. She only has the sneakers for the twins, a few books for Azelma, and some jeans for Gavroche left to wrap. They are all growing too fast and their clothes are never kept up.

She had hoped for a few toys as well, but she wasn’t able to find anything she can afford that her parents won’t try to sell as soon as they learn of their existence. At least, clothes are hard to make any money off of. Especially if they’re off brand. 

Her roll of cheap wrapping paper is wedged under the edge of the sofa, and her scissors had skidded nearly into the kitchen in her haste to get to work earlier, but once she collects her things and forces herself to concentrate, she gets the rest of the gifts acceptably wrapped within the hour. 

Carefully moving the packages into her bedroom for safe keeping, she stretches hard enough for her back to pop in three places, and looks around her apartment. The decorations are up, she has a box of cookies and wrapped gifts. Now all she needs is a tree and she can finally relax for a few hours. 

It’s dark enough out that she doesn’t want to go look for a tree now, but she knows that nothing will still be open on Christmas Eve, so she forces herself to go back outside into the cold. 

The corner lot a few blocks away still had trees when she had passed them on her way home from the bar a couple of nights prior, so she heads in that direction to see if they still have anything left. 

The place is just a small parking lot, dimly lit with fairy lights strung along the chain-link fence. But there are a couple of small trees left that she thinks she might be able to carry home, so she heads in to see which looks to be in the best shape. 

“We’re closing soon,” a grumpy looking lot attendant says, not bothering to look up from his phone. He’s perched on a metal stool in the corner of the lot, and Eponine ignores his surly tone, refusing to be baited. 

“That’s fine. It’s not as if there’s much to look through. I’ll take this one.” She points to a tree that’s a little shorter than the others, but that still has most of its needles and still looks mostly green. The price tag says it’s at the very limit of her budget, but still affordable, so she doesn’t haggle. She just hands over some money to the attendant who doesn’t even look up at her as she tries to get her hands in between the needles to grip the trunk and try and heft the tree. 

She can’t quite get it off the ground, and after three attempts she nearly gives up. But she only has to manage to get this tree a couple of blocks, so rather than admit defeat, she turns around, grabs the trunk from behind her, and starts dragging it along the cracked pavement. 

The small dusting of snow actually makes things easier, and the tree slowly stutters along behind her, shedding needles like breadcrumbs marking her path home. 

The stairs are harder, and she has to bump the tree up them one painstaking riser at a time until she finally reaches her door. Leaning the tree against the wall she unlocks her door and finally drags the thing inside. It’s only then that she realizes that she doesn’t have a stand for it. She swears.

Near tears, she starts scouring her apartment for something she can use to hold this tree up for just a couple of days, finally settling on a mop bucket braced by a couple of boxes that she loads down with her meager books and summer clothes just to keep it all from sliding. Using the last of her wrapping paper she covers the whole mess and steps back. 

It looks terrible, but she grins anyway. Her very first Christmas tree. The decorations can wait until morning. There’s nothing more she can do right now. All her energy is gone. Instead, she heats up the meatloaf she got from the diner, and pulls out one of her rare beers, sitting down on the sofa and slowly letting her muscles unclench. 

The food isn’t very good, the food from the diner never is, but it’s warm and filling, and she can’t remember the last time she had a full meal that wasn’t comprised of scraps. She has two small pre-cooked chickens and a package of premade mashed potatoes in the fridge for Christmas Eve, and a full carton of eggs for Christmas morning, and it’s the most extravagant food she’s purchased in months. 

Draining her beer in one long pull, she finishes her meal, cleans up the shreds of wrapping paper she had missed, and goes to curl up in her bed with a pile of blankets and a cheap paperback she found at the second-hand shop while she was gift shopping. 

It’s a cheesy romance novel, and she generally hates those, but this one looked like it would be good for a laugh, and she needs something to keep her entertained now that she’s finally as ready for Christmas as she’s going to get. She strips off her clothes and climbs under her blankets, finally warming up for the first time in days. 

She doesn’t even realize she’s dozing off until the book hits her in the face. Groaning, she sets the book aside, already having forgotten everything she read, and gives herself permission to fall asleep early. 

* 

Christmas Eve dawns bright and hazy. The sky is a flat white that promises more flurries, but it’s light and Eponine feels more rested than she has in weeks. 

She climbs out of bed slowly, immediately missing her blankets, and pulls on her cleanest pair of jeans and an ugly Christmas sweater that she had bought back in August just for this occasion. 

Rummaging around in her cupboards, she finds some old ramen and a loaf of sliced bread that doesn’t appear to have any mold on it. She misses Irma more than she thought she would. At least when Irma is around there are always groceries in the apartment. Eponine chips in some money and Irma shops and cooks for them both. Now that she’s gone, Eponine has fully forgotten to buy any food that isn’t planned for Christmas Eve dinner. 

Sighing, she puts a stove on for the ramen and promises herself that she will find the time to get some groceries as soon as Christmas is over. 

She toasts the bread and puts a little margarine on just to keep it from being dry. There’s nothing to drink except water and one bottle of soda for the kids, so she has some water while she waits for the ramen. It isn’t exactly breakfast food, but it’s food enough. 

As soon as her ramen boils, she throws in the seasoning packet, lets the noodles get soft, and pours it into a bowl. She eats standing at the counter so she can’t get comfortable, because she knows that she exhausted the last of her reserve energy days ago, and she won’t get back up again. The ramen is bland, but the extra water gives her more broth, so she considers it a fair trade. 

Then, she goes to her closet and pulls out the boxes of ornaments she has been collecting throughout the season. 

There are a few individual ornaments that she purchased loose which she sets aside for later. But the glass balls and the black baubles join a box of cheap plastic stars she already had stashed aside as well as a box of candy canes that will serve as both decoration and treats for the twins later. 

With no idea how to decorate a tree, she starts unboxing the ornaments, sticking them wherever the whim takes her until she has run out. It’s only then that she remembers she bought a string of fairy lights for the tree. 

Cursing loudly, she tries to wrap the lights around the tree without blocking any of the ornaments she’s already placed. The lights don’t quite reach the top of the tree, and when she plugs them in a couple of the bulbs are burnt out. 

“That might be the saddest tree I’ve ever seen.” She says it out loud just to drive the point home, because she can’t stop grinning. The tree is lopsided, standing in a mop bucket, with uneven decorations and lights that only reach three quarters of the way up. But it’s her tree. Hers alone. She did this all by herself, and she’s never seen anything so lovely. 

Then, she drags a blanket off her bed, curls up on the couch, and puts on the cheesiest, most cliched holiday movie she can find. 

The afternoon passes in a haze of terrible movies until her phone chimes. 

**The Brats:** It’s time.

 **Me:** Do you want me to come get you? 

**The Brats:** No, I’ve told them we’re going for a walk to see the snow. If you show up they’ll know. 

Eponine knows that Azelma is right. She also knows that they’ve been grown for far too long, despite being far too young, and are more than capable of walking the handful of blocks to her apartment alone. There’s a small part of her that wants to go get them anyway, but she swallows it down and lets Azelma have this. Gives her this part in the planning and the set up. She’s earned it for managing to even half keep something from Gavroche. 

**Me:** I’ll leave the door open for you. 

She then gets up, carefully folds the blanket and replaces it on the foot of her bed, and starts unwrapping the chickens. 

The cookie sheet was ruined when she tried to bake, but there are still a couple of small baking pans, so she puts a chicken in each one and puts them in the oven. The numerous Youtube videos she’s watched said that if she was just rewarming chicken it shouldn’t take that long, and since it was already cooked, she should be very careful to not dry it out. 

She’s just pulling it out and putting it on a plate when the door swings open and a pair of arms wrap around her thigh. 

“Eponine! It’s snowing!” 

She grins down at Gabriel who is clinging to her leg, snow in his dark hair, a grin taking over his small face. 

“So it is! Did Az take you to see the snow?” 

“She did! And then we ended up here.” 

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I have enough food for a hoard of hungry kids.” 

Gavroche is still holding on to Matthieu’s hand, but he gives Eponine an unimpressed look. She’s just grateful that he doesn’t say anything with the twins in the room. Azelma is shaking out her hair, but she’s smiling at them all, indulgent, like she was the one who orchestrated the entire thing. 

“All right, brats, go play while I get food on plates, okay?” 

Matthieu lets go of Gavroche’s hand and drops himself directly onto the floor in front of the couch. Gabriel goes and sits with him, and Eponine takes a break from the chicken to pull out some crayons and the couple of coloring books she keeps on hand and toss them towards the twins. She doesn’t want them to think there’s anything special going on just quite yet or they’ll never get a moment's peace. Matthieu might be quiet, but Gabriel has more than enough energy for both of them. 

As soon as the twins are occupied, Azelma sitting on the sofa behind them making the odd comment about color choices and mediating disputes over crayon sharing, Gavroche slips up beside Eponine. 

“That tree looks terrible.” 

She grins at him. “I know.” 

He gives her a long look, then grins back. “Can I give the twins candy canes?” 

She’s shocked that he’s asking instead of her just turning around and finding them all eating piles of sugar. “Later. Let’s get some real food into them first, if we can, okay?” 

He shrugs, but doesn’t argue with her, which she takes as the holiday miracle that it is, and finishes slicing up the chicken. The mashed potatoes she puts into Irma’s microwave for a couple of minutes, then adds a little extra margarine to them when they come out steaming. 

There isn’t a table, so she serves everything at the counter then brings the plates to her siblings. 

“Dinner time.” 

Gabriel looks at the crayons longingly, but puts them aside and takes his plate. 

“Matthieu, you too,” Azelma says, nudging him with her toes. 

He blinks hazily up at her, but obediently sets aside his coloring to take a plate. 

It’s quiet while they all eat, everyone more focused on their food than each other. 

The chicken is only slightly dry, but warm and the mashed potatoes are only barely runny. Eponine considers it her best success in the kitchen, and the way everyone is eating, they clearly agree. 

Azelma had always been the one to cook, and Eponine knows that she should probably have had her sister help with the meal, but she had wanted to be able to do this _for_ them all, not with them all. Give them something where they’d never had. Something she’d never had. 

“Is there any more?” Gabriel asks, eyes wide, plate cleaned. 

Eponine is glad she bought two chickens. “There is.” 

“I’ve got it,” Azelma says, standing, her own plate empty. She takes Gabriel’s plate with her to the kitchen, freeing a space on the sofa that Gavroche immediately slides into to make room for Eponine, who has been sitting on the arm, leaned into his side. 

Matthieu quietly gets up and follows Gabriel to the kitchen. Eponine had hoped that he might have started to grow out of his need to not let his twin out of his sight now that they were starting school, and her heart hurts to see that she was wrong. She doesn’t want to think about what else she might have missed, and promises herself that she will have them over more often. 

“Does he do that at school?” she asks Gavroche quietly. 

Gavroche looks up from his plate to where Matthieu is standing just behind Gabriel. “Yeah. They had to switch his seat in class so they could sit together, because he kept getting up and sitting on the floor by Gabriel. They sent a letter home, but.” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Eponine knows that the letter went directly into the trash and that no one is doing anything to help at all. 

There’s a small part of her that wonders if they would have been better off if they hadn’t all been so stubborn about taking care of themselves. If maybe someone would have noticed what was going on and intervened. She hopes that Matthieu’s teachers will finally step in. She wouldn’t have known how to take the help, and she suspects Gavroche of being too much like her, but the others might not be beyond help. The school probably won’t let her speak for them, but she promises herself that she will at least try. 

Azelma leads the twins back with more food on each of their plates. Eponine gives her a smile and moves to get off the sofa, but Azelma shakes her head at her, sitting on the floor with Gabriel and Matthieu. 

“What color should I make this rabbit?” Azelma asks them, flipping to a new page in the coloring book. She lets the twins bicker over the crayons, handing her colors and giving her instructions while they eat. 

Eponine watches the exchange, glad that someone is still watching out for them now that she doesn’t live with them anymore. 

Plates are emptied, and she quietly gets up to wash them, trying not to disturb her siblings. Gavroche has slid onto the floor and is stirring up trouble, arguing for the sake of arguing over everything from color choices to the way Azelma is trying to fill in the page. It’s familiar and gentle, and Eponine is smiling to herself while she washes plates. 

Once everything is cleaned up, she takes a deep breath. “It’s getting late. Well past Gabriel and Matthieu’s bedtime.” 

The twins give her matching glares, and she tries to keep her smile contained. 

“Do we have to leave?” Gabriel asks, eyes going wide in a blatant display of emotional manipulation that he could only have learned from Azelma. 

“How about a compromise. If you both promise to take a quick bath with no complaints and go right to bed you can all stay here for tonight.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. Irma went to see her family, so her room is empty. You two and Gav can have my bed. Azelma can take Irma’s and I’ll sleep right here,” she says, patting the sofa. 

Gabriel gets up and slams into her legs, wrapping his little arms around her, and she pats his head. “Can we stay here forever?” 

Eponine has to blink hard a couple of times before she can speak. “Sorry, squirt. There isn’t enough room for all of you. You know I would keep you with me if I could.” She doesn’t say that she’s been saving every penny that she didn’t spend on her surprise Christmas celebration to get a place large enough for all of them. That she’s already been looking into the paperwork to fight her parents for custody. For right now, it would just raise their hopes and she still isn’t sure she can manage it, so she keeps her mouth shut. 

His eyes go sad, but he doesn’t argue with her. 

“Now scram, bath time, you two. There are towels on the shelf.” 

She gets no arguments and both boys run off towards the bathroom, the sound of giggling and the water starting to spill out. 

“All right, just give me a minute to get a few things out of my room,” she says as soon as the bathroom door is closed. 

Azelma’s grin is a little too wide, and Gavroche narrows his eyes at them both, but neither of them say anything. 

Eponine slips into her room and uses one of the blankets on her bed to make a makeshift sack to haul all the gifts out of her room and into Irma’s, Azelma and Gavroche trailing behind her. 

“What did you do, rob a bank?” Gavroche asks, staring at the small pile of messily wrapped packages. 

She cuffs him gently on the side of the head. “I have jobs now, brat. And if I want to use them to do something nice for my siblings, well, no one will believe you outside of these walls.” 

He laughs, and for once it isn’t tinged with cynicism or sarcasm, just a happy laugh, and she decides right there that all the stress was worth it. 

Azelma takes the packages and stacks them neatly in the corner where the twins won’t see them until the morning, fingers lingering on one of the one’s with her name on it. 

It’s quiet in the apartment, the only sound is the echoes of splashing coming from the bathroom, and Gavroche goes back into the living room. Eponine follows him, taking the blanket she used for gift transport with her, and spreading it on the sofa. 

“Here,” Gavroche says quietly, unusually serious as he hands her a battered cardboard box. “This is for you.” 

“Gav, what did you do?” she asks softly, taking the box but not opening it. 

“I had a few dollars left of what I nicked from dad. I saw you looking at it, so. I went back.” 

She opens the box, and inside is the star she had been looking at in the second-hand shop. It’s every bit as beautiful as she remembers, and she runs a finger over one of the points. She doesn’t say thank you, because she knows that Gavroche wouldn’t know how to hear it. 

Instead, she puts the star gently in his hands, then picks him up. He’s too heavy for it, but she does it anyway. “I can’t reach. Put it up for me?” 

“Fine, make me do your job for you.” She can hear the smile in his voice, though, so she lets him grumble. 

“Make a wish,” she says softly as he sets the star on top of the tree. 

“I don’t think that’s how this works.” 

“You are holding a star. I can’t think of a better time to make a wish.” 

“That’s bullshit.” But she can tell he’s closed his eyes anyway, the star still between his fingers, even if the tree is doing the job of supporting it. 

Eponine can hear the twins still in the bathroom, Azelma banging around in Irma’s room, and Gavroche breathing as she struggles to continue to hold him up. She closes her eyes and makes her own wish for the day she can have this all the time.


End file.
